Experience : 7+ years
Position: Tech Lead
Location: NCR/Bangalore
Date: June, 2024
** [Worst Interviewing Experience] **
Resume shortlisting
The process started through a consultant 1 year back. I was looking to switch that time. Their TAT was so high that I got shortlisting after 3 months of applying. At that time I asked for some time since I was busy in office work
OA
I resumed the process in December,2023. This was a round on hackerrank with medium/hard difficult problems. Got positive response after 1 month.
Onsite Technical Screen 1
This was first face 2 face interview with them and lasted for 2 hours. They rescheduled the interview twice. Even though they were the one to reschedule, the next available slot for interview was always after 2 weeks. This round happened in mid Feb,2024. They asked to design autocomplete like system, asked a brain teaser, asked commonly used app's HLD and asked 1 DS problem (all of it in 2 hours)
Onsite Technical 2
Heard from them after 2 weeks that screening is cleared. Got interview scheduled & recheduled again here too. In the interview, the panel didnt know it was an onsite round and asked questions similar to screening round. This also lasted for 2 hours and went well
Onsite Technical 3
This was the only interview with good TAT. Heard from interview that 2nd round has to be ruled out. It was a mistake from their end and a duplicate screen round. They scheduled this round for 1 hour but again got stretched to 1 hour 45 minutes. They asked LLD of music app, HLD of a commonly used app, brain teaser, a medium level DS algo problem.
Onsite Technical 4
Had to mail them again for progress and got a verbal positive feedback . This round lasted for 1.5 hours. The interviewer didn't know what he wanted. Kept changing entire use cases for LLD. Asked for HLD and then told not to tell HLD and focus on classes. Still I was able to come up with best approaches (was a straight forward question )
Onsite Technical 5
Just when I thought, interview experience can't be bad, I had this interview with their existing Principle Engineer. She asked what all questions have been asked before so that it is not repeated, gave a question and got confused herself. I came up with LLD. Then asked HLD for heavy hitters like problem section. Came up with all approaches.
This round also lasted for 1.5 hours. The interviewer was not focusing at all on solution and seemed unprepared for the clarifying questions. In the end she also seemed satisfied.
Recruiter call
Asked about existing CTC
Result
Had to nudge the recruiters again and again to get result. Finally the recruiter told that its a reject. Asked for feedback or round number which had negative feedback but she didnt tell
Spent ~ 10 hours and 1 year in the process and all the company could come up with was "we have been unable to identify an ideal match between your particular background and experience and our current needs". Big MNCs like DE Shaw should show some respect towards candidate and honour the time.
Each round scheduled was for 1 hour in calendar and got overstretched to >1.5 hours. Recruiters didn't know how many rounds / what type of rounds are already done. Interviewers were too reluctant and insecure about accepting any answer. In 1 interview I was asked starightly about formula of Levenstein distance. I told the working / usecases but they wanted entire working.
Had specifically conformed positive feedback aftter every round, still got rejected. On asking more, recruiter told that budget is not an issue -_-
